Web design & Free Software

Jake Rayson Rayson

<p>A web designer since the 20th century, I am a pragmatic advocate of Free Software and I use proprietary software when appropriate. I made the full-time switch to Linux back in 2007, and my desktop tools of choice are Linux Mint, Inkscape, GIMP and Sublime Text.
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<p>As a Front End Developer, my core skills are HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery, and my working life reflects my commitment to open standards and accessible websites (ie accessible by everyone, regardless of browser, platform, ability or technology).
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<p>For web publishing platforms, I use WordPress for ease of use and Drupal for more complex solutions.
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<p>I am also learning about Ruby, Rails, Sinatra and CoffeeScript. I like the minimalist Ruby Way. To this end, my personal portfolio website is built with NestaCMS.
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Latest Posts

I ♥ GitHub; I ♥ the shiny Open Source goodness of their shared code repository versioningness, I ♥ the commercial option for private repositories, I ♥ the website, I ♥ how easy it is to keep your oft-used projects local and up-to-date, and I ♥ the command line simplicity of Git.And I ♥ it that they’re hosting the first US CoderDojo for kids, aged 7-18.

Daniel Glazman @glazou, co-chairman of the CSS Working Group, has published a dramatic call for action entitled The open web needs you NOW, which has swept like wildfire across the web community.He is asking that websites don’t cater solely for webkit-based browsers (that’s Safari, Chrome and most Android & iOS browsers).

Nearly 3 years ago, that clever old bastard and emigre-wannabe @Malarkey wrote a Universal Stylesheet for the much maligned browser Internet Explorer 6. In the words of @zkhan, “it's essentially serve IE6 text only, but dressed up as though you're being kind”.

As a Free Software stalwart, I’ve long considered Google Web Fonts a magnificent service: the fonts are Free, and Google hosts them for free, so that everyone can have web fonts on their websites.I also came across Kickstarter a few months ago, via the educationalist Phil Shapiro, and have indeed contributed to the book Don’t Go Back to School.

Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical has announced Ubuntu's new Heads Up Display, catchily titled The Intenterface. I like the look of it a lot, as I said previously, the Sublime Text editor uses a form of it already.

I recently had a bout of the Seasonal Flu, and one of the few bonuses was that I lay in bed and watched old episodes of The Antiques Roadshow. There is something so gloriously timeless about the show, how a medieval glass goblet looks pretty much the same now as it did in the '70s.

At my last contract job, building a gloriously swift website in Drupal, I decided to give generously of my generous contract income to Free Software. Notepad++ is my perennial Windows text editor of choice, even in the light of the oncoming (proprietary) text editor juggernaut that is Sublime.

Or, to put it more verbosely: When to use a Web Application Framework rather than a Web Content PlatformNo, I am not a flaming firestarter, I just wanted to share some thoughts. I have a couple of projects on the boil at the moment, one is my own portfolio site, the other yet another recipe site, with a seasonal twist.

Yesterday I installed Linux Mint 12, almost officially the world's most popular Linux distro, made easy for simpletons such as myself. I was swayed by ZDNet contributor Jamie Watson, as he has detailed the progress of Linux Mint 12 thoroughly.

Have you ever considered how your website looks if the user has images turned off?I only ask because I have tethered my Android phone to my laptop using EasyTether (darned proprietary software but I couldn't get the Free stuff to work).